We know that setting our daily goals is one way to help us achieve them. Writing them down is going to get you even closer to transferring them into the DONE list at the end of the day - by a whopping 42% according to Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at the Dominican University in California.

I listened to a terrific podcast recently by Dr Christian Jarrett. He interviewed two world experts in the psychology of procrastination - Professor Tim Pychyl at Carleton University and Dr Fuschia Sirois at the University of Sheffield.

We all face fears throughout our lives. It’s natural, we’re human. And more often than not, we face our fears and grow mentally stronger as a result. The problem comes when we don’t face them but instead develop unhelpful thinking styles and/or behaviours to avoid them.

Most people suffering from depression and related conditions believe exactly as I did for many years; that there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Some sort of misplaced connection that’s different to everyone else, like a badly-wired plug or a car with an intermittent fault that nobody else can experience or see but you.

It’s not uncommon to hear “I’m so stressed but I’ve no time to do anything about it”. I hear that from new clients, friends, and family. They’d love to but “there aren’t enough hours in the day”. Familiar?

I always figured I would have children of my own. That was usually just how it rolled then. When I was 16 years old, I bought one of those tiny hard-covered books from a newsagency with lots of cute hand-drawn illustrations inside and cheezie quotes.

I was beyond frightened. I had to eat something but my body was listening to my brain and my brain was saying “why are you doing this? what if you fail? why don’t you just pull out?” These mantras, fed by fear, were on a continuous loop.

I went to an event last night and listened to Natalia Cohen speak. Amazing. Loved every word. It began with her painting a visual picture with words of her epic adventure rowing across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Cairns.